This report describes the composition and operation of the library of the Gray Freshwater Biological Institute at the University of Minnesota, a non-traditional information service which provides information to the institute by combining the use of three bibliographic databases with current awareness services, OCLC, MINITEX, and author reprint request cards. The relationship of each of these sources to the library is discussed separately. Figures illustrate library retrieval procedures, and tables provide data on expenditures, request publication dates, number of requests, lending libraries, number of journals by lender, number of requests by lender, database costs, online versus printed index costs, request sources, OCLC costs, and the request fill rate. (FM)